Eritrea

A myth of self-reliance

Eritrea's people pay the price for their government's pride

THE secretive ex-guerrilla government has always been good at concealing its real intentions. But Eritrea's policy on aid has become unusually bizarre. One of the poorest countries in the world, with some of its population now facing food shortages, Eritrea is deliberately rejecting help.

This week, the United Nations special humanitarian envoy for the Horn of Africa, Kjell Magne Bondevik, made his first visit to Eritrea, where the UN faces a tricky dilemma. Eritreans are tired and hungry, but the government sticks to a mantra of self-reliance.

In early 2005, the UN estimated that two-thirds of Eritrea's 3.6m people needed food aid, making Eritrea one of the most food-aid-dependent countries in the world. No independent survey has been allowed since then, but aid-workers say that this year's better harvest is still not nearly enough to feed the country. Nobody is starving just yet, they say, but the signs of widespread hunger are showing.

Rather than engaging with foreign governments and international agencies, however, Eritrea expelled the United States Agency for International Development last year, slashed the numbers receiving food aid from 1.3m to 72,000, and has now told at least 11 other international aid organisations to stop their work. Meanwhile, food aid is rotting in the warehouses and further imports have slowed to a trickle.

The government insists that it is best qualified to look after the interests of its own people, and accuses the UN of trying to distract attention from its own failures. Six years ago, at the end of a brutal border war, Ethiopia and Eritrea agreed to respect an international ruling, supported by the UN, that would fix their common frontier. To Eritrea's fury, Ethiopia refuses to accept the ruling without further talks. Eritrea cannot hope to win another fight against its much bigger neighbour. So it has turned its wrath on the UN and the West instead, accusing them of failing to press Ethiopia into compliance. This week, Eritrea's government refused Mr Bondevik's request to release the food aid that is stacked in its warehouses.

Last year Eritrea grounded UN helicopters in the demarcation zone abutting Ethiopia, and expelled several peacekeepers. The heightened tensions brought international interest, but little real progress has been made towards resolving the issue.

At best, analysts question the government's competence. At worst, they now question its intentions, especially towards its own people. Last month an Eritrean presidential spokesman was quoted as suggesting, bizarrely, that the latest order to three large international agencies to stop their work could somehow improve efficiency and maximise the impact of aid. But the affected agencies—the American Mercy Corps, the Irish charity Concern, and Acord, a British group—have done some of the best work in Eritrea, providing support for tens of thousands of vulnerable people in some of the country's most inaccessible areas.

Government restrictions on travel in the country mean that aid-workers are often the only foreigners to reach the remoter regions. So expelling the three charities may be one way of muzzling reports of any impending humanitarian disaster. If Africa's youngest country cannot achieve self-reliance in practice, it can at least seek to create the illusion of it.